


Detritus

by bloodbright



Category: Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
Genre: F/F, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2807225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodbright/pseuds/bloodbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maddie, trying to hold on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detritus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cottoneyed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cottoneyed/gifts).



**i.**

They got in early that night—took off as soon as it was dark and landed by ten o’clock, and Julie was done with whatever she was there to do by eleven thirty. In that cottage on the edge of the Moon Squadron airfield Maddie was lingering, already in her oversized pajamas but reluctant to go to bed, when the door burst open, her heart gave a leap, and Julie came in, emerging from the enveloping embrace of her greatcoat like a bear from its cave.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, already pulling pins from her hair; Maddie paused, to watch her slim deft fingers work. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” She extracted her hairbrush from the depths of her travel case.

“Being kept up by elephants galumphing in without a care, apparently,” Maddie said, just a beat too late, and then, impulsively, “let me,” and Julie handed the brush wordlessly to Maddie and sat down on the edge of the bed. Maddie settled crosslegged behind her, close enough to feel the heat of her body.

“Tell me if I pull,” Maddie said, forcing her voice steady.

“I most certainly will,” Julie said, as if she hadn’t noticed the waver in Maddie’s voice. “In fact, I’ll make sure every soul on this base hears of it. You’ll be drummed right out of the ATA for excessive brutality, and then I’ll have no one to fly me places. They’ll find me huddled in a corner after the war, gnawing on an old boot. Whatever happened to you, they’ll say, and I’ll tell them—”

“Hush your nonsense,” Maddie said, but she was laughing now, and her hands were very gentle, working the knots out of Julie’s hair with her fingers, pausing when Julie shivered just once.

They fell into silence as Maddie worked until her brush strokes reluctantly began to slow, every last knot and tangle long since smoothed away. At long last she let the brush fall and rested her hands on Julie’s thin shoulders, felt the too-fast rise and fall of them and felt her own breath catch in turn, and then Julie—turned her head and pressed a kiss to the back of Maddie’s hand. Maddie froze, breathless—looked at Julie looking back at her through her hair—

Maddie looked at Julie, at her face, at the long golden spill of her hair, and then she buried her hands in it and pulled Julie around and kissed her and kissed her, and somewhere in there Julie’s hands landed on her own shoulders, gripped with unexpected strength; and it was like every impossible dream that Maddie had ever had, that something could be this wonderful, this easy.

-

She woke before dawn when the door clicked open.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you. I have to go,” Julie whispered in the darkness. She was already fully dressed, her hair pinned up again in its signature French twist; she paused a moment, standing there, before darting in to press a kiss to Maddie’s cheek. “I’ll see you again soon,” she said, and was gone.

Maddie watched the door close, and touched her own cheek, her lips; pulled the sheets up and buried her face in her pillow, and grinned uncontrollably.

-

It was easy, then, to not think about the future, to believe that there would be more opportunities for motorbike rides and visits to Craig Castle and dancing, that there would always be one more flight by moonlight, one more night in that quiet dark cottage on the edge of the airstrip; to believe that they would never run out of time.

 

**ii.**

This time it was late when Julie came in and Maddie was already asleep, but some part of her must have been listening for the sound of the door because though she had once slept through air raid sirens, she woke up as soon as it opened and sat up in bed.

Julie didn’t even bother to take off her greatcoat before she flung herself down dramatically across the bed. “Kiss me, Hardy,” she groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes.

“I don’t know,” said Maddie. “Sounds like a lot of work. What’s in it for me?”

Julie sat up and opened her mouth to reply indignantly but Maddie was already upon her, and they fell back together on the bed. Maddie pushed the coat back off Julie’s shoulders, and in the confusion Julie’s scarf got tossed into parts unknown; and they made short work of Maddie’s regulation-issue pajamas thereafter.

“Long night?” said Maddie some time later, smiling down at Julie.

“A long night, day, and night again, if you must know,” Julie said, eyes half-closed; but the corners of her mouth were curling up ever so faintly, and her body was a line of warmth tucked against Maddie’s side. “See if I sign up for the next war.” She was gone again by the time Maddie woke up.

-

“I’ve got your scarf,” Maddie said, the next time she saw Julie.

“Hold on to it,” Julie said carelessly. “It gets cold up there by yourself, doesn’t it?”

-

O Lady Julia Lindsay MacKenzie Wallace Beaufort-Stuart, O Flight Officer Beaufort-Stuart, O Julie—did you know, lying there in the moonlight with your hair spread out across the pillow, that you were the most beloved and beautiful of all Maddie had ever seen—more than the castle crags of Lindisfarne and Bamburg and the glittering Windermere and the dragon’s back of Hadrian’s Wall, more than the white cliffs of Normandy and the Seine shining silver like a reflection of the Milky Way above? It wasn’t for the Holy Island seals that Maddie went to war in the end.

 

**iii.**

Once they met just in passing—they landed at the Moon Squadron airfield and Julie leapt out and Maddie climbed out more slowly, and then Maddie turned right around and got into another plane and flew it somewhere else—but in that brief moment when they were both standing on the airstrip:

“Look at this,” Julie said, holding her hand out with something in it. Maddie took it, her fingers brushing Julie’s palm; Julie smiled, a secret mischievous thing. Maddie smiled back, and then looked down at the coin in her hand. A double-headed coin; a mistake.

“Keep it,” Julie said. “For luck.”

-

The coin didn’t join the rest of the detritus—hairpins and movie ticket stubs, two stray cigarettes, a tube of Julie’s lipstick—on top of her dresser at her grandfather’s house; Maddie kept it with her. She didn’t believe in lucky charms, not really, but she acquired a habit of rubbing her thumb absently over it in her pocket. It was in her pocket when she flew Julie to France and it was with her that day on the riverbank, when she made that shot; but when she reached for it, back in England, it wasn’t there. She never did find it again.


End file.
